[The Vermont Poetry Newsletter is not issued by me but by Ron Lewis, by whose permission I post this. PLEASE NOTE: I have edited his newsletter so that links are provided rather than text. If I cannot find a link, I will either omit the relevant portion of the newsletter to avoid copyright violations, or I will provide an alternate link. Please contact Ron Lewis if you would like to receive his Newsletter in full. All images are linked.]

The Vermont Poetry Newsletter Network is made up of people of all backgrounds, ages and skills who appreciate the craft of poetry and want to promote it in the beautiful state of Vermont. The network consists of a free e-mail list, an eventual web site, workshops, open mics, poetry performances and other literary events. The network provides opportunities to meet local poets, talk about and enjoy poetry, and motivate and inspire yourself in whatever writing projects you are involved.

The mission of the Vermont Poetry Newsletter is to foster the poetry arts community in the Green Mountain State. Its goals are to serve as a resource for and about VT poets; to support the development of individual poets; and to encourage an audience for poetry in Vermont.

2.) Dear Friends of Poetry:

A recent poem of mine described the meetings of the poetry critique group I belong to, the Otter Creek Poets. The poem began as a poem about poetry itself, but evolved into something else, and that something else was met with appreciation. I would suggest you use that as a writing prompt for yourselves.

With it being so close to Christmas, it’s a time to open the file we all have tucked away somewhere, titled “Poetry Wish List.” If you don’t already have one, then your New Year’s wish should be to make a Wish List for yourself. Then, when next year rolls around and someone asks you what you’re going to wish for that year, it could be something from that list, like a book of poetry you’ve wanted to read. Right after the joy and happiness wish, of course, and the “please tell me there’s a Sanity Clause” wish!

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year to you all!

Ron Lewis
VPN Publisher
247-5913

3.) WRITING ASSIGNMENT • SUGGESTION • EXERCISES

OTTER CREEK POETS EXERCISES & ASSIGNMENTS

Teaching and Learning Ideas For Any Poetry-News Pairing

Pick any photo from the news, then any poem. Then, answer these questions about the pairing. (This is a great classroom exercise.)

Questions:

Why do you think this poem was paired with this photo and article? What do the two have in common?

Which do you like best: the poem, the image or the article? Why?

What does this pairing say about life today? Do you think someone looking at it 25 years from now would “get” the same meaning? What about 100 years from now?

What other photos or articles could also have been paired with this poem? Why?

What other works of literature, film, or fine art can you think of that also echo, expand or even challenge the words and ideas of this poem?

Activities:

Write a dialogue between the poet and the photographer, or the poet and the journalist, or between something in the photo or article and something in the poem.

Take a picture of your own to illustrate this poem.

Write a poem of your own in response to this photograph and/or article.

Put the words of the poem into a tool like Wordle to see the “word cloud” that emerges, then do the same with the text of the article. What important words, if any, do the two have in common? Does the word cloud make you see the themes, ideas or subjects of each more clearly? How?

CHICAGO — The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine, is pleased to announce the appointment of Ilya Kaminsky as the new director of the Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute (HMPI). Kaminsky—a poet, critic, and translator—will begin his tenure on January 1, 2011. He succeeds inaugural HMPI director Katharine Coles.

Born in Odessa, in the former USSR, Kaminsky came to the United States in 1993. He is the author of Dancing in Odessa (Tupelo Press, 2004) and currently teaches poetry and comparative literature at San Diego State University, where he will continue to serve as director of the MFA Program in Poetry and remain a tenured associate professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature… (continue)

5.) St. Vincent’s Hospital Closing, Famous Poets to Be Born and Die Elsewhere

Legendary Greenwich Village hospital St. Vincent’s—birthplace of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay (for whom the hospital is named) and deathplace of drunk Welsh poet Dylan Thomas—is effectively closing its doors. Despite various efforts to keep the place solvent, St. Vincent’s is terminating all in-patient care and downscaling to an outpatient clinic; there is a possibility they’ll maintain some kind of urgent care capability.

The 160-year-old St. Vincent’s was the last fully operating Roman Catholic general hospital in New York, and as of now has 400 in-patient beds in need of a home; elective surgeries are set to end on April 14th. My favorite line from the Times article: “In recent years, [St. Vincent’s] management troubles were worsened by the difficult economics of the health care industry.” Hoorary for free-market health care! (….continue)

6.) “Daffodils” (1804)

I WANDER’D lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretch’d in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed — and gazed — but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

By William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

7.) The Adirondack Center for Writing (ACW) is an organization that supports Adirondack-based writers and promotes literary arts in the Adirondacks. We host numerous workshops, conferences, readings (poetry readings and Open Mic’s every month!), and other programs to help keep writing alive in northern New York State. The Adirondack Center for Writing also gives writers the opportunity to share their work and review grant and publishing information. Our site helps unify the widespread writing community. Please, take a look around!

As its name implies, the Syllable Counter reports the number of words and syllables. Unlike other programs, however, the Syllable Counter uses a dictionary to look up the syllable length of words. Because of this it counts syllables more accurately than any other program extant.

Read both and tell us what you think — or suggest other Times content that could be paired with the poem instead.

To learn more about the collaboration, and to find ideas for using any week’s pairing for teaching and learning, see this post…. (continue)

10.) Mr. Obama, It’s Time for Some Poetry

New York Times, Nov 3, 2010 (Click Image at Right)

11.) Poetry Podcasts

The Poetry Foundation has a multitude of podcasts that will keep you busy for years! Here’s a few topics that might interest you enough to listen to:

The Possibility of an Answer

May We Blossom Every Fifty Years

Loneliness Rhymes and Slippery Slopes

Nothing Plus the Idea of Chocolate

Meat Wants Sweet

Iamb What Iamb

Are Poets Lazy Bastards?

Poems Can Stop Bulldozers

You’re Always Moving Toward Silence

I Love Originality So Much I Keep Copying It

The Savage Detective Turns to Poetry

“Accident Plays a Part in Art”

For these and more podcasts that you can look here. Also, if you simply go here then you’ll have several categories from which to choose, such as:

Poetry Off the Shelf

Poetry Magazine Podcast

Poem of the Day

Poetry Radio Project

Essential American Poets

Poetry Lectures

Avant-Garde All the Time

Poem Talk

Chicago Poetry Tour Podcast

All this from The Poetry Foundation! And this isn’t even the organization that now has $100M to work with, as was given to Poetry Magazine! (If you don’t already belong to the PF, you should probably support them.)

12.) Invitation to Vermont Poets!

Leonard Gibbs, a member of the Otter Creek Poets and Poetry Society of Vermont, the Magister Ludi of The Dead Creek Poets’ Society and webmaster of Quibbles.com and author of the Poet’s Corner, a regular monthly column in the Addison Independent, has an invitation to Vermont poets! The newspaper has recently informed Len that they would like to have more poetry published in their newspaper, so Len is asking poets from anywhere in Vermont to send him material for him to review for future articles in Poet’s Corner. Leonard’s email address is: ML_Len@Quibbles.org.

13.) The Survival of the Small [by Jeff Oaks]

I’ve been reading again about insects because my poems have been slowly filling up with them over the last couple of years. Until I realized I wanted to be a writer around age 17, I thought I’d be a biologist, specializing in entomology. I was a shy kid, so I was always looking at the ground. My childhood was full of butterflies, moths, cicadas, grasshoppers, fleas, lightning bugs, beetle after beetle after beetle. For a few years, I raised monarch caterpillars in an old aquarium that I’d daily stuff with milkweed leaves; I’d watch the whole process of their transformation from caterpillar to chrysalis. It was better than tv! On the days the butterflies emerged, I’d take the aquarium out to the front porch. I’d take each monarch out one by one in my cupped hands. Some would stay on my fingers for a minute or so, flexing their wings in the sun and air. Some would fly off almost immediately. I loved doing that. I probably should start doing it again. It made me feel as if I were doing some direct good in the world.

14.) Dean Young Needs Our Help

(and to him we give our prayers)

Poet Dean Young has a degenerative heart condition that has deteriorated rapidly recently, and now he is in need of a heart transplant. Young has lived with congestive heart failure due to idiopathic hypotropic cardiomyopathy for years, but his condition has taken a turn for worse.

Tony Hoagland has written this request for help on Transplants.org:

If you know Dean, you know that his non-anatomical heart, though hardly normal, is not malfunctioning, but great in scope, affectionate and loyal. And you know that his poetry is what the Elizabethans would have called “one of the ornaments of our era”–hilarious, heartbreaking, courageous, brilliant and already a part of the American canon… (continue)

15.) The Future of the Literary Magazine

Essays, interviews, reprints, and so on regarding the direction of the literary magazine.

Is There a Lit Mag in This Class?

by Nicholas Ripatrazone

Nearly a year has passed since I implored secondary school teachers to use literary magazines in the classroom. Thanks to CLMP’s Lit Mag Adoption program and other initiatives, undergraduate and graduate classrooms engage contemporary literary magazines at a regular rate, yet the logistics of such programs (which require students, rather than the institution, to handle the purchases) are less appropriate for secondary schools. Public-school teachers must carefully choose their district-budgeted purchases on a wide variety of curricular goals, and though I have had the support of administrators and colleagues, New Jersey’s educational budget woes have slowed the literary magazine adoption process at the whole-class level. It will take time to convince community members that a subscription to The Kenyon Review might be more useful than a new class-set of The Old Man and the Sea. (….)

16.) Comments/Replies to the above article:

1) Nicholas Ripatrazone asks, “Is There a Lit Mag in This Class?”

…Writers did different things in literary magazines than they did in books. Books were stodgy, hard, spine-formed collections. There seemed little room to breathe within such pages. But literary magazines were athletic, a place for play—serious play, no doubt, but certainly capable of more range. Writers could stretch. Most importantly, as a young writer I felt much more confident with an issue of Boulevard in my hand than one’s collected poems. I certainly needed to be familiar with both, but the possibility that my own work could one day appear in the thinner volume was exactly the confidence I needed to go write, to submit stories for workshop, and to pursue the study of writing.

Though I think Ripatrazone’s essay is necessary and intelligent, I recently discovered that the general argument for lit mags in the classroom isn’t all that new. Curt Johnson—editor of December: A Magazine of the Arts and Opinion from 1962 until his death in 2008—wrote on this same topic for the 1966 issue of College Composition and Communication, arguing astutely (….)

2) Why shouldn’t there be Lit Mags in the class room?

Intern Holly responds to the age-old question…

I love literary magazines. I love their creativity, their variety, and yes, even their brevity. Reading poems, short stories and flash fiction is something any busy person can fit into their lives. I have to plan out when I can fit in a novel, but keep various Lit Mags around the house and be entertained at a moment’s notice for only moments if that is all I can spare.

Being exposed to so many writing styles and topics is a joy. From tattoo’s to Tango’s there is a never-ending supply of great ideas. That is why after reading the article “Is There a Lit Mag in This Class?” I became inspired.

I am in a unique position in my life right now, where I’m able to look at education from all perspectives. I am not only a mother of school-aged children, and not only work in a school but I attend college as well. I am surrounded by teachers, students and the quest to both partake and share the gift of knowledge. (….)

17.) Letter to the Editor of The Poetry Foundation

Dear Editor,

Regarding Michael Robbins’s criticism of Robert Hass [September 2010] and the letters that followed [November 2010]: those on both sides of the debate seem to have difficulty keeping their focus on the language of the poems. “This isn’t poetry, it’s a list of stuff in Hass’s kitchen,” Robbins declares. “The Haiku masters . . . are behind simple but elegant passages like this,” John Matthias replies. One feels caught between two small boys arguing is too, is not. The danger is that both positions—perhaps all strong opinions about poetry—begin to seem arbitrary and subjective…. (continue)

With these two new addresses you will be able to get more updates from me, but only if you want them.

Best, David

All the Plants That on the Deck This Summer

All the plants that! on the deck this summer
gave us so much pleasure: upside down now
on the compost pile: going back to where
they came from:
petunias, salvia, begonia, geranium, pansy,
fuchsia and that volunteer tomato that came up
out of the compost in the petunia pot, and grew,
blossomed and bore fruit among all those flowers.
All that color, all that joy and light:
gone back now to darkness, back to rot,
to make fertility, fecundity, fruitfulness
for next year.

“Quintessence of the Minor: Symbolist Poetry in English,” by the California poet Garret Caples, is the first in Wave Books’ pamphlet series, and the format perfectly suits the subject. Its very appearance is minor. The cream pages, stapled twice at the spine, sit in the hand like the program for a lengthy wedding. There’s no jacket copy, no information about Caples or Wave’s new series. It doesn’t even say how much it costs! Touch the uncoated cover after reading the sports section, and the smudge is there for good. This feels like a document made to be passed on, in secret, to a fellow traveler…. (continue)

A most interesting follow-up/reply to this article:

Well, for one thing, major poets are major and minor poets are minor because the former tend to be good poets with strong and idiosyncratic read: original) poetics and the latter bad ones, too derivative or embroiled in the stylistic claims of their era. This idea of the minor poet as the underdog, that the only thing that separates him or her from the major poet is that they don’t have an entire class devoted to them at some English department, is a symptom of this rather wrongheaded attempt in American Academia to democratize the study of art, and even its praxis, for that matter, when it comes to the MFA’s (that is, to comfort all the kiddies who want to learn how to be poets). Plus, how your describe your encounters with “minor literature,” and how you say that it “maybe it’s the remainder tables that secretly move the culture forward” – this all troubles me and gives me pause. Are we to reduce everything to questions of monetary cost, or the false dichotomies of major and minor, looking everywhere else but to the texts themselves, what makes them good or bad, and what makes them unique or derivative? If anything, this occulting and even fetishizing of the minor has everything to do with the increasingly endemic hipster-driven desire to see and be seen, to be off-beat and different just for the sake of doing so, and not particularly because one arrives at these texts through reading and studying, but browsing through cool bookstores. It’s bad enough that MFA students only write to meet workshop deadlines, but the trend of shunning “major” writing for “minor” writing has been less a genuine reaction to either but a superficial and entirely fashionable attempt at individuating oneself as a writer and reader: “look, I have interesting tastes.” Though I realize this last aspect is not everything, it seems to be what is lurking behind this reviewer’s conception of a “minor” literature. I’d say, if I had to differentiate at all within the sphere of literature, I’d do so only on an individual basis, that is, as to whether an individual writer inaugurated a whole new school of writing (like Whitman, or Pound and transatlantic Modernism, or Ginsberg and the Beats, etc) or if he or she was just a dilettante, which is all one seems to be encountering these days. Simply put, I just find these categorizations entirely problematic, and that they come to bear on our conception of literature far too harshly as to even act as blinders, in a sense. If you like it, read it, regardless of how much it costs or where you bought it. Poetry is not a commodity.

A great article on e-publishing poetry. Perhaps the Poetry Foundation or Poetry Magazine (with its $100 Million bequest) can finance a conversion program.

The future of poetry e-books, and why it’s not what you think.

BY ALIZAH SALARIO

Long before the advent of e-publishing, poet Reb Livingston was a believer in the do-it-yourself ethos. As editor and publisher of No Tell Books, a micro-press devoted to poetry, she churns out up to five books a year through her one-woman operation. Livingston wants her titles to remain just as accessible in today’s shifting book culture as those produced by publishing powerhouses. So when the e-book frenzy hit, Livingston embraced the change. She didn’t have a fancy Web team or a contract with an electronic distributor, but she did have Internet access, a coupon from an online publishing platform called Lulu, and enough pluck to give it a shot.

Livingston published her first e-book, an anthology of No Tell poets titled The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel—Second Floor, earlier this year. It will be the first and last e-book she publishes through Lulu.

“I was very disappointed,” said Livingston. In short, she said, the e-book was a mess. The poems on the e-reader screen didn’t match up with their print counterparts, there were mistakes in lineation that changed the flow of entire poems, and the attempt to replicate the curly, intricate font on the cover of the print book resulted in an e-book cover that was blurry and hard to decipher…. (continue)

22.) Jerry Johnson, the Creek Road Poet

Jerry has his second book of poems ready for publication (70 poems in all). For those of you who love Jerry’s poetry and music, and visit his great web site, you’ll be pleased to read Up the Creek without a Saddle. You’ll immediately be caught by the sincerity of his words, the memories, his circle of friends.

23.) Belated Thanksgiving poems for family and friends

(It’s never too late…)

BY THE EDITORS of The Poetry Foundation

The Cranberry Cantos

Thanksgiving is America’s harvest festival—a time to acknowledge the help of family and friends, and a reminder of what a gift it is to be alive. It’s a day to overindulge in the here and now, even as we reflect on the past. In other words, it’s the perfect holiday for poetry! While a barn full of winter stock and a home overrun with family and friends does not fit with our popular conception of the poet as solitary brooder, these poems show that the occasion has provided poets—from Harriet Maxwell Converse in the 19th century to Elizabeth Alexander in the 21st—with plenty of food for thought. Whether you’re looking for a pre-meal toast, a scrap of American history, or a late night conversation starter, these poems should provide ample stuffing. (….)

24.) Freaks Come Sit By Me

By Jennifer Michael Hecht

Elizabeth Bishop translations of Carlos Drummond de Andrade’s poetry

Darling Bleaders,

There are a lot of ways to tell a story and one way is that sometime after my friend SH took her life I was teaching Elizabeth Bishop’s Collected Poems in the MFA Program at the New School and happened upon Bishop’s translations of the Carlos Drummond de Andrade’s great poem, “Don’t kill yourself.” It made my brows raise because I hadn’t quite ever thought of just saying, “Don’t kill yourself,” and furthermore, saying it twice. Stacey recently posted it on this site, but here it is in full again. (…continue)

25.) International Exchange for Poetic Invention

International Exchange for Poetic Invention is a multilanguage weblog with links and information on poetic invention – our term for exploratory / investigative / experimental / radical / conceptual poetry. We hope the site will serve as an international point of contact for the exchange of information among those interested. Charles Bernstein & Ton van’t Hof

26.)Planning to go to Manhattan in 2011? Consider these events:

Sundays at 2:00pm

Four Way Books / Spring 2010 Readings on the Bowery, sponsored by Four Way Books

Ron Silliman has the most widely recognized poetry blog in the nation, hands down. He has written and edited over 30 books, and had his poetry and criticism translated into 12 languages. Silliman was the 2006 Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere, a 2003 Literary Fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts and was a 2002 Fellow of the Pennsylvania Arts Council as well as a Pew Fellow in the Arts in 1998. He received the Levinson Prize from the Poetry Foundation in 2010. Silliman has a plaque in the walk dedicated to poetry in his hometown of Berkeley, CA, although he now lives in Chester County, Pennsylvania and works as a market analyst in the computer industry.

It’s a rare occasion when I find dozens of poems by just one poet that I’d like to share with you, but Joyce Sutphen, who lives in Minnesota, is someone who writes that well, with that kind of appeal. Here is just one example. How many of us have marveled at how well our parents have succeeded at a long marriage?

The Exam

It is mid-October. The trees are in
their autumnal glory (red, yellow-green,
orange) outside the classroom where students
take the mid-term, sniffling softly as if (….)

The first poem we published in this column, back in the spring of 2005, was by David Allan Evans, the Poet Laureate of South Dakota, and it’s good to publish another one today, having recently had our five-year anniversary.

Girl Riding a Horse in a Field of Sunflowers

Sitting perfectly upright,
contented and pensive,
she holds in one hand,
loosely, the reins of summer:

Those of us who live in the country equate the word “development” with displacement, and it has often been said that subdivisions are named for what they replace, like Woodland Glade. Here’s a writer from my state, Nebraska, Stephen Behrendt, with a poem about what some call progress.

Developing the Land

For six nights now the cries have sounded in the pasture:
coyote voices fluting across the greening rise to the east
where the deer have almost ceased to pass
now that the developers have carved up yet another section, (….)

To be stumped by the very last crossword puzzle you ever will work on, well, that’s defeat, but a small and amusing defeat. Here George Bilgere, a poet from Ohio, gives us a picture of his mother’s last day on earth.

Blank

When I came to my mother’s house
the day after she had died
it was already a museum of her
unfinished gestures. The mysteries

At any given moment, there must be 100,000 of us trying to fit in, and finding it next to impossible. Here’s a wonderful portrayal of that difficulty, by Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, who lives in Astoria, New York.

At the Office Holiday Party

I can now confirm that I am not just fatter
than everyone I work with, but I’m also fatter
than all their spouses. Even the heavily bearded
bear in accounting has a little otter-like boyfriend.

34.) Poets Laureate of the U.S.A.

A Net-annotated list of all the poets who have served the Library of Congress as Consultant (the old title) or Poet Laureate Consultant (the new title). Biographies & general reference sites are linked to the poets’ names — for the recent Laureates these are our own poet profiles with book-buying links at the bottom. Many of the other linked biographies are pages from the Academy of American Poets’ Find a Poet archive, a growing & invaluable resource. If there is no general information site about the poet, we have searched the Net for sample poems or other writings or recordings & listed those below the poet’s name.

Position History: According to a February 7, 2003 press release from the Vermont Arts Council, “Robert Frost was declared Poet Laureate in 1961 [upon the adoption of Joint House Resolution 54 by the General Assembly]. In 1988 Governor Kunin re-established the position. (Reference: Executive Order No 69, 1988) Galway Kinnell was the first State Poet named for a term of 4 years as a result of this order in 1989.” The Arts Council further notes that “at the direction of the Governor [it] conducts the selection process for the State Poet by convening an advisory/selection panel. The Vermont State Poet is a person whose primary residence is in Vermont; whose poetry manifests a high degree of excellence; who has produced a critically acclaimed body of work; and who has a long association with Vermont.”

Burlington College’s The Queen City Review is a yearly journal of art and literature and accepts the work of new and established writers and artists in the areas of poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, memoir, photography, and fine art, as well as essays and criticism on all aspects of the aforementioned. They seek to publish high quality work that ranges broadly in topic and genre.

The Queen City Review can be purchased by 2-year subscription or individually. The price of one issue is $8 plus shipping charges ($1) for a total of $9. Subscriptions can be purchased for #$14 plus shipping charges $2) and includes the Fall 2008 and upcoming 2009 issues. They accept cash, check, and credit cards. You can mail your payment to them or by calling (802) 862-9616 ext. 234 to place your order over the phone. If mailing your payment, mail details to:

Bloodroot is a nonprofit literary magazine dedicated to publishing diverse voices through the adventure of poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction. Their aim is to provide a platform for the free-spirited emerging and established writer.

A publication of Middlebury College, a high quality literary magazine that continues to uphold its reputation for publishing extraordinary, enduring work. NER has been publishing now for over 30 years.

Cost: $8 for a single issue
$30 for a single year (4 issues)
$50 for two years (8 issues)

A Literary and Fine Art Magazine of Castleton State College, Castleton.

The first issue of Vermont Literary Review was published in 1994. The review is published once a year. Work featured in the review includes poetry, fiction, drama, and personal essays from and about New England.

From its inception until 2006, students and professors reviewed the work submitted and selected work to be published. They used to jointly edit and design the review as well. After a brief lapse, the Vermont Literary Review has resumed publication in 2008 as a journal edited and designed solely by English Department faculty. The Literary Club, which used to help create this journal, is now putting out a publication of student work. (….)

A Literary and Fine Art Magazine of Johnson State College, Johnson; in publication since 1987.

The Green Mountains Review is an international journal publishing poems, stories, and creative nonfiction by both well-known authors and promising newcomers. The magazine also features interviews, literary criticism, and book reviews. Neil Shepard is the general editor and poetry editor of the Green Mountains Review. The fiction editor is Leslie Daniels.

The editors are open to a wide range of styles and subject matter. If you would like to acquaint yourself with some of the work that we have accepted in the past, then we encourage you to order some of our back issues (….)

“The name of the second river is Gihon. No sooner has it come out of Paradise than it vanishes beneath the depths of the sea . . .” –Moses Bar Cepha

The Gihon River Review, published biannually, was founded in the fall of 2001 as a production of the BFA program at Johnson State College. Issues are $5 each. Submissions in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction are read from September to May. Poetry submissions may not exceed five poems; fiction and nonfiction may not exceed twenty-five pages. Send all correspondence to The Gihon River Review, Johnson State College, Johnson, Vermont 05656. Please enclose a SASE. For further info by email, grr@jsc.vsc.edu.

The Burlington Poetry Journal is a new nonprofit publication interested in creating a means for provoking opinions, ideas, and thoughtful responses for poets in the Greater Burlington area. While there are numerous outlets for writers to gather and share privately in Vermont, there is no publication that brings together poetry of all styles and writers of all ages for the enjoyment of the general public. It is our hope that this journal will inspire writers to share their work with others who may be unaware of their talent, and for those who have never considered themselves writers to try their hand at poetry. We invite you to submit your work and share with others your thoughts and abilities with the Burlington community. The work you share will produce a dialogue as writers become aware of each other and begin to expose themselves and others to new poetry. The eclectic nature of the Burlington Poetry Journal will serve to stimulate its readers and authors.

Founded in 2002 as an online literary journal, Tarpaulin Sky took the form of 12.5 internet issues (see the archive) before its first paper edition in November 2007. The magazine continues to publish new work both online and in print, often curated by guest-editors.

Tarpaulin Sky focuses on cross-genre / trans-genre / hybrid forms as well as innovative poetry and prose. The journal emphasizes experiments with language and form, but holds no allegiance to any one style or school or network of writers (….)

10)The Mountain Review

Colchester High School’s English Department has been publishing an interesting literary magazine: The Mountain Review. The Mountain Review is sponsored by the Vermont Council of Teachers of English Language Arts (VCTELA). Generally, the mission is to publish work from Vermont students, K-12. The Mountain Review has published poems, essays, short stories, excerpts from larger works, and art work. Wayland Cole and Katie Lenox have been the editors for several years; both teach at Colchester. Before them, Shelia Mable, a South Burlington teacher, was the editor for many years.

2009’s Mountain Review is over 100 pages long!

Students at all Vermont schools can enter the competition to be published in the Mountain Review. If you have questions, feel free to call them at (802) 264-5700 or email at colew@csdvt.org or lenoxk@csdvt.org. Send orders for copies of The Mountain Review to Katie Lenox at: Colchester High School, PO Box 900, Colchester, VT 05446. Send $5 per book; $2 postage to ship 1-3 books. Checks payable to the VCTELA.

11) The Salon: A Journal of Poetry & Fiction

WELCOME to the temporary on-line home of the Honeybee Press, a brand-new writer’s cooperative based in Burlington, Vermont. The first book from the press will be the debut issue of its bi-annual literary magazine, The Salon: A Journal of Poetry & Fiction. The goal of the press is to produce high-quality local literature and make it more affordable and visible to the public. [….]

Go to web site for submission guidelines.

12) Hunger Mountain

Hunger Mountain is both a print and online journal of the arts. We publish fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, visual art, young adult and children’s writing, writing for stage and screen, interviews, reviews, and craft essays. Our print issue comes out annually in the fall, and our online content changes on a regular basis. (….)

Subscription Prices
One Year $12.00
Two Year $22.00
Four Year $40.00 (Save $8!)
Back issues $8.00

13) The Onion River Review

The Onion River Review is a literary journal whose annual edition features poetry, prose, and visual arts. The Onion River Review is edited by the students of Saint Michael’s College in Vermont, and is committed to publishing work from students, faculty, staff, alumni, and the greater community.

The first issue of the Saint Albans Literary Guild’s magazine, Route Seven: A Vermont Literary Journal, is a 56-page publication featuring new and established writers and artists with an emphasis on Northwestern Vermont writers. Strong literary and non-fiction voices from other regions are also featured and are encouraged to submit to future issues.

ST. ALBANS: The Saint Albans Literary Guild is proud to announce the release of the premiere issue of Route 7, a new Vermont literary journal, on Sat., Feb. 20, at the STAART Gallery in St. Albans. The event will feature readings from contributing authors, as well as hors d’oeuvres and beverages.
Route 7 is a 56-page magazine featuring fiction, non-fiction, humor, poetry, and artwork. The first issue includes a wide range of moods, from the introspective and idyllic to the offbeat and humorous. The more than 20 contributors included hail from Franklin County, and across Vermont and New Hampshire. The magazine aims to highlight creative voices from across the region.

“It’s a 56-page salon — you provide the refreshments,” said Co-Editor Launie Kettler. The release party for the new publication will be held at the STAART Gallery on Sat., Feb. 20 from 4-6 p.m. Copies of the magazine will be available for sale at the event, online at http://www.route7magazine.org, and at bookstores across Vermont. Proceeds from the $5 cover price will go to support future outreach programs of the Saint Albans Literary Guild. Even as they celebrate the release of this first issue, editors continue to accept submissions for future issues on an ongoing basis.

The Saint Albans Literary Guild organizes readings, author appearances, classes and many other book-related activities for both authors and book lovers of all kinds. To learn more about the guild or to join, check our website, http://www.SaintAlbansLiteraryGuild.org, or call 527-7243.

Submission guidelines

Route Seven: A Vermont Literary Journal, the St. Albans Literary Guild magazine, is currently accepting submissions of non-fiction, fiction, journalistic feature writing, theatrical writing, historical writing, and poetry for its premier issue. We welcome submissions from all genres. Writers from all regions are encouraged to submit. One of the Guild’s goals is to support and nurture the literary community in northwestern Vermont and weight will be given to northwestern Vermont writers. However, Route Seven is not looking only for writing that seeks to express the region and its history. Editors will primarily look for original voices and perspectives, and powerful writing and storytelling. Submit up to three poems and two prose pieces. Feature writing should be 500-1500 words in length. Short fiction should not exceed 3500 words. Excerpts from longer works and previously published works are also welcome. Submissions will be accepted for future issues on an ongoing basis. Send submissions to magazine@saintalbansliteraryguild.org in .rtf, .txt, .odt, or Word format. Please include “Route 7 literary magazine submissions” in the subject line. Hard copy submissions may be sent to Route 7 Magazine co/Launie and Jedd Kettler, PO Box 101, St. Albans, VT 05478. Submissions will not be returned. Provide email or SASE for results.

Contributors retain all rights to work included in Route Seven.

Artwork submissions

Route Seven: A Vermont Literary Journal, the St. Albans Literary Guild magazine, is also accepting submissions of full-color and black-and-white artwork for its premier issue.

We welcome submissions in all mediums. Color artwork will be considered for the journal’s front cover and should be vertically oriented. Black-and-white line art, illustrations, and photography will be considered for inside layout and display. There are no theme requirements for submissions. Route Seven hopes to feature the varied talents of Vermont’s visual artists. Editors will look primarily for visually compelling images to include.

Submissions should be received by December 15, but will be accepted for future issues on an ongoing basis.

Send email submissions to magazine@saintalbansliteraryguild.org in .jpeg, .tiff, .png, or .psd formats. Contact us you if you prefer sending work in other formats. Please include “Route 7 literary magazine submissions” in the subject line. Hard copy submissions may be sent to Route 7 Magazine co/Launie and Jedd Kettler, PO Box 101, St. Albans, VT 05478. Please do not send original work as submissions will not be returned. Provide email address or SASE for results.

Patrick Gillespie maintains a bright, intelligent blog. There is a decided bias in favoring poetry that is written in meter, that uses form, or that plays with language in ways that separate poetry from prose – rhetoric, imagery, simile, metaphor, conceit, rhyme, meter — Traditional Poetry.

PoemShape is now the home of the Vermont Poetry Newsletter & Poetry Event Calendar.

One can subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new postings by email.

The Poetry Society of Vermont, founded in 1947, is an association of poets and supporters who join in promoting an interest in poetry through meetings, workshops, readings, contests, and contributions to the society’s chapbook. Anyone may join the society including high school and college students and non-residents of Vermont. We welcome both writers and appreciative readers.

In September 2007, The Poetry Society of Vermont will celebrated its 60th Anniversary. (….)

44.)

YEAR-ROUND POETRY WORKSHOPS IN VERMONT

BELLOWS FALLS

1) Great River Arts Institute – See details elsewhere in this newsletter

2) Poetry Workshop at Village Square Booksellers with Jim Fowler (no relation to owner Pat). The goal of this course is to introduce more people to the art of writing poetry and will include a discussion of modern poetry in various forms and styles. Each week, the course will provide time to share and discuss participant’s poetry. Poetry Workshops on Monday mornings (9:30 a.m. -12:00 p.m.)- Jim Fowler’s sessions continue, with periodic break for a few weeks between sessions. Students should bring a poem and copies to the first class. The course will be limited to 5 to 8 students to allow adequate time to go through everyone’s poetry contributions and will meet in the cafe at Village Square Booksellers. James Fowler, of Charlestown, New Hampshire, has a Masters Degree in Environmental Science with a major in Nature Writing. He was the editor of Heartbeat of New England, a poetry anthology. Fowler has been widely published since 1998 in such journals as Connecticut Review, Quarterly of Light Verse, and Larcom Review. Fowler is a founding member of the River Voices Writer’s Circle, and a regular reader at Village Square Booksellers-River Voices Poetry Readings. The fee for this 6 week Workshop is $100, payable to Mr. Fowler at the first class. Pre-registration for the Poetry Workshop is suggested and may be made by calling Village Square Booksellers at 802-463-9404 or by email at vsbooks@sover.net or jfowler177@comcast.net.

3) InkBlot Complex Poetry Workshop runs through the Vermont Independent Media’s Media Mentoring Project and is held at the Rockingham Public Library at 65 Westminster Street in Bellows Falls. No previous writing or journalism experience or even class attendance is required. Participants are invited to bring a project or share successful techniques. The workshop aims to lift poetry from the page and reveal how it is a living force in daily life. Originally taught at the University of Illinois at Chicago to great acclaim, its interactive nature and inclusion of multiple art forms leaves dry, academic notions of poetry behind. It functions through three tenets: 1) Presentation of the art form as a living element of our daily world, 2) individualized, personal enrichment and free range of expression for each student, and 3) artistic ecultivation through unexpected means. Taught by seasoned arts journalist, cultural critic and poet Clara Rose Thornton, this free event explores the poetry we encounter all around us – in songs we hear, the ways we express ourselves, even the advertisements we see. In the final session students then create their own works with an increased sense of connection to the way words construct meaning. All materials are provided. Instructor Clara Rose Thornton is an internationally published film, wine and visual arts critic, music journalist, poet and former book and magazine editor. Her writings on culture and the arts have appeared nationally in Stop Smiling: The Magazine for High-Minded Lowlifes, Honest Tune: The American Journal of Jam and Time Out Chicago. Currently residing in an artists’ colony in Windham County, she acts as the biweekly arts columnist for the Rutland herald, staff writer for Southern Vermont Arts && Living and a regular contributor to The Commons. A portfolio, bio and roster of writing and editing services can be found at http://www.clararosethornton.com. For more information about the Media Mentoring Project, visit http://www.commonsnews.org or call 246-6397. You can also write to Vermont Independent Media at P.O. Box 1212, Brattleboro, VT 05302.

BERLIN

The Wayside Poets, who share their poetry publicly from time to time, have been meeting irregularly for the past 25 years. They used to be called The Academy Street Poets. Membership is by invitation only. They meet now at the Wayside Restaurant & Bakery in Berlin. Members include Diane Swan, Sherry Olson, Carol Henrikson and Sarah Hooker. You can contact them through Sherry Olson at: solsonvt@aol.com or 454-8026.

BURLINGTON

The Burlington Poets Society, a group of “stanza scribblers” that express their love of verse, made up of UVM students and professors, have recently organized, meeting at the Fleming Museum at UVM in Burlington for their periodic “The Painted Word” series of poetry readings. I hope to have additional information on this group in the coming months.

GUILFORD

The Guilford Poets Guild, formed in 1998, meets twice a month to critique and support each other’s work. Their series of sponsored readings by well-known poets which began at the Dudley Farm, continues now at the Women and Family Life Center.

MIDDLEBURY

The Otter Creek Poets offer a poetry workshop every Thursday afternoon, from 1:00 to 3:00 in the basement meeting room of the Ilsley Public Library, 75 Main Street, Middlebury. This workshop, the largest and oldest of its kind in the state, has been meeting weekly for 13 years. Poets of all ages and styles come for peer feedback, encouragement, and optional weekly assignments to get the poetry flowing. Bring a poem or two to share (plus 20 copies). The workshops are led by David Weinstock. There is considerable parking available behind the library, or further down the hill below that parking lot. For more information, call David at 388-6939 or Ron Lewis at 247-5913.

PANTON

This town is the home of Leonard Gibbs and his Dead Creek Poets Society. Leonard Gibbs is a member of the Otter Creek Poets and Poetry Society of Vermont, is the Magister Ludi of The Dead Creek Poets’ Society. Leonard invites visitors to his web site, Quibbles.com, and subsequent comments for discussion; send him some of your poetry for free critiques! He’s really very good. Leonard’s email address is: ML_Len@Quibbles.org. Interesting responses to items Leonard has posed on his site, may end up on the site itself.

NORWICH

This group meets on the first Sunday of every month at the Norwich Library, 6:30 p.m.

STOWE

There is another poetry workshop happening in Stowe, but unfortunately I know nothing much about this group. If you do, contact me!

WAITSFIELD

The Mad River Poets consists of a handful of poets from the Route 100 corridor. More on this group in the future.

45.)

OTHER POETRY WORKSHOPS IN VERMONT

BURLINGTON

Scribes in the making put pen to paper as part of an open verse-writing session at the Fletcher Free Library, 235 College Street. Three consecutive Thursdays, starting January 8, 2009, 5:00-6:00 p.m. Free. Contact information: 862-1094.

This course is designed for older adults through younger adult high school students who might be interested in learning how poetry is made and how to make it. It will involve an intensive study of poetry’s nuts and bolts (assonance, alliteration, metaphor, meter, forms, and so forth) in conjunction with reading a good bit of poetry that demonstrates these devices. If there is time toward the end of the course, and there may not be [or in a second course if there is interest], you will put what you have learned into practice. At that point it will function like a graduate-level poetry workshop with the poems submitted anonymously for critique by the instructor and the students who will by then have developed their critical skills well-enough to make useful critical comments from having been exposed to the form and theory of poetry.

It is important to keep in mind that this is not a class in which the primary or even secondary concern is reading each other’s poetry and talking about it. This is a course in learning how to write poetry, which like any other art involves mastering the craft. But learning the craft of poetry is great fun in its own right because each major element of the craft reflects something about the workings of the human mind.
A text book is required, John Frederick Nims’ Western Wind: An Introduction to Poetry. Multiple copies at $1.00 each are available on line through Abe Books. Go to: http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchEntry?cmid=hp-search-advancedsearc… and type in Nims under author and Western Wind under title. This is a great book and you will love it for all the many wonderful things it will teach you, in addition to how to make a poem. Do not buy a new copy from Amazon because it is nowhere near as good as the older edition; that new edition (co-edited by David Mason) costs over $45.00 and is not worth the money. Please buy one of the cheap 1974 or 1983 editions solely edited by Nims.

About the Instructor:

John Wood, who holds both the MFA in Creative Writing and a Ph.D. in English literature, lives in Saxtons River and is a poet and art critic whose books in both fields have won national and international awards. For 25 years he was the Director of the Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing at McNeese University where he taught the writing of poetry. Several of his students have received the $20,000 NEA Poetry Fellowship, others the Ruth Lilly Fellowship in Poetry, still others a MacDowell Residency, an Amy Clampitt Fellowship, and a variety of other awards. And many of his former students have published books from leading presses. John and his teaching were the subjects of a Los Angeles Times front page article in 1999 and a full page article in 2005 in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Intro. to the Writing of Poetry John Wood Thursday 6—7:30 PM 7 weeks
$60 Members / $80 Non-Members
Basic introduction to the writing of poetry. See website for additional details.

Revived for the 2009 academic year is the InkBlot Complex Poetry Workshop, designed for upper-elementary and high-school-age students, grades 7-12. The curriculum functions through three tenets:

Innovative presentation of the art form as a living element of our daily world

Individualized, personal enrichment and free range of expression for each student

Artistic cultivation through unexpected means

The workshop debuted at the University of Illinois at Chicago, during a three-week summer program, entitled Project C.H.A.N.C.E., for underprivileged sophomore and senior students from area high schools. It was a fantastic success, and the program director requested its return. With this encouragement, I decided to expand and adapt the workshop for various age levels, as an educational/arts supplement for after-school programs and enrichment programs and an arts elective for more traditional academic settings. The response has been wonderful. (…) Click on Typewriter for more…

46.)

YEAR-ROUND POETRY WRITING CENTERS IN VERMONT

BURLINGTON

The Burlington Writer’s Group (BWG) meets on Tuesday evenings from 7-9 PM and has a new home at the Unitarian Church in the church’s little white house off of Clark St., 2nd floor. They’d like to let people know and also invite anyone interested to join them whenever folks are in town or as often as they’d like.

The Burlington Writer’s Group is a free drop-in group. They decide on a prompt and write for 20 minutes, followed by a go-around reading. They can usually get in two writes depending on group size. All genres and experience levels are welcome and there really are no rules other than demonstrating courtesy while people are writing (don’t interrupt). They don’t do much critiquing though some spontaneous reactions occur. Mainly it’s good practice to just show up and write for 40 minutes and share the writing, if so inclined…

BURLINGTON

Women Writing for (a) Change supports the authentic experience of women who honor themselves through creative writing. Our community supports reflection as we move into our questions and awaken to change. Participants enhance expressive skills, strengthen their voices, deepen themselves as women as writers for positive change in all spheres of life. Creative writing in all genres is our shared vehicle. Women Writing for (a) Change is for women who, 1) dream of writing for self-discovery, for personal or social healing, 2) hunger for creative process in their lives, 3) yearn to explore their feminine voice, 4) crave reflective, space, and 5) are in transition. For more information, go to their web site at http://www.womenwritingVT.com/ or contact Sarah Bartlett at either 899-3772 or sarah@womenwritingvt.com.

SAINT ALBANS

The Saint Albans Literary Guild organizes author readings, classes on writing and literature, and other book related events. The Guild is sponsoring a new literary magazine featuring local writers. Finally, it promotes Vermont authors, book groups, writing groups, and literary events held in Franklin County and northwestern Vermont. Contact us for more information or join the Guild to become involved with literary endeavors in your area.

The first issue of the Saint Albans Literary Guild’s magazine, Route Seven: A Vermont Literary Journal, is a 56-page publication featuring new and established writers and artists with an emphasis on Northwestern Vermont writers. Strong literary and non-fiction voices from other regions are also featured and are encouraged to submit to future issues.

A Writer’s Group has started to meet at the Springfield Town Library on the fourth Monday of each month, from 7 to 8 pm. For more information, call 885-3108.

WHITE RIVER JUNCTION

The Writer’s Center is for serious writers and nervous beginners. It’s for procrastinators who could benefit from regular deadlines – and for the prolific who could benefit from quality feedback. It’s for anyone with a manuscript hidden in a drawer, or a life story or poem waiting to be written. It’s for people who don’t know where to start or how to end. And for writers who are doing just fine on their own, but would like the company of other writers. The Writer’s Center is for anyone who is writing or wants to write. One of the Center’s consultants is April Ossman (www.aprilossmann.com). Founded by Joni B. Cole and Sarah Stewart Taylor, the Writer’s Center offers instruction and inspiration through a selection of workshops, discussions, and community. We would love to see you – and your writing – at The Writer’s Center! For more info, http://www.thewriterscenterwrj.com/.

Prose! Poetry! Journaling! Pitching! (I know! I know! F. Scott Fitzgerald said that using exclamation points is like laughing at your own joke… but what’s wrong with that?!!!)

And more big news! “The Writer’s Center” has a new Facebook Page that we’re now using to spread the word about workshops, offer writing tips, share publishing news, etc. If you haven’t already, be a part of the page by following the link below and clicking “like”. Write on!

47.)

OTHER WRITING GROUPS IN VERMONT

The League of Vermont WritersThe League is open to all who make writing a part of their lives. We offer encouragement, motivation, and networking opportunities to writers with a broad range of writing experience.
You do not need to be published to join. Visit their Membership Page for more information about benefits and fees.
Founded in 1929, LVW’s mission is to:

Help writers develop their skills

Promote responsible and ethical writing and writing practices

Increase communication between professional writers and publishers

Promote an enduring appreciation for the power of the word

The LVW publishes Vermont Voices, An Anthology, at irregular times. They have published 3 separate volumes to date.

48.)

POETRY EVENT CALENDAR

Below please find the most current list of poetry happenings in Vermont for the near future. Please be aware that these events can be found on Poetz.com, but there is usually additional information that is typed here that would be cumbersome to place on Poetz.com. Please note all events are Vermont-based unless they are of extreme importance or happen to lie just outside our borders. If you would like to save on paper and ink, please just highlight what you need, or perhaps only events for the coming month, and print that information. All events are advertised as free unless indicated otherwise.

Mon, Dec 13: Vermont Studio Center, 80 Pearl Street, Johnson, 8:00 p.m. Poet Susan Mitchell. Susan Mitchell has won many awards for her poetry, including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She has authored three books, most recently Erotikon and Rapture, which won the Kingsley Tufts Book Award and was a National Book Award finalist. Her poems have been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The American Poetry Review, The Yale Review, and Fence, as well as in seven volumes of the Best American Poetry series, and have been awarded three Pushcart prizes. Mitchell lives in Boca Raton, and teaches in the MFA Writing Program at Florida Atlantic University.

Fri, Dec 31: Bethany Church, Parlor and Fellowship Hall, Montpelier, 3:00 p.m. – 5:45 p.m.. Mark your calendar, First Night Montpelier has scheduled a writing workshop, followed by a slam: again, it’s for all ages! Attend one or attend both. Write you must at the writing workshop; slamming is optional for you at the slam, but hope you’ll bring a couple of your original poems and give it a whirl: The workshop is scheduled for 3-4:15 P.M.; the slam will start at 4:15, ending by 5:45. Both are in the Bethany Church; Parlor and Fellowship Hall, respectively!

2011

Sundays at 2:00pm

Four Way Books / Spring 2010 Readings on the Bowery, sponsored by Four Way Books

Thu, Jan 6: Vermont Studio Center, 80 Pearl Street, Johnson, 8:00 p.m.. Brigit Pegeen Kelly. Brigit Pegeen Kelly’s book The Orchard (BOA Editions, 2004) was named a Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, a Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award in Poetry, and a Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry. Kelly’s other poetry collections are Song (BOA Editions), the 1994 Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets and a Finalist for the 1995 Los Angeles Times Book Award, and To the Place of Trumpets (Yale University Press), selected by James Merrill for the 1987 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize. She is a recipient of a Whiting Writer’s Award and the Witter Bynner Prize for Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Additional awards and honors include a Discovery/The Nation award, the Cecil Hemley Award from the Poetry Society of America, and fellowships from the Whiting Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Kelly teaches in the creative writing program at the University of Illinois, and has also taught at the University of California at Irvine, Purdue University, and Warren Wilson College, as well as numerous writers’ conferences in the United States and Ireland.

Tue, Jan 24: Vermont Studio Center, 80 Pearl Street, Johnson, 8:00 p.m.. Ilya Kaminsky. Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odessa, former USSR and arrived in the USA in 1993, when his family was granted asylum by the American government. He is the author of Dancing In Odessa, which won Whiting Writers Awards, American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award, Ruth Lilly Fellowship from Poetry magazine, Dorset Prize and was named 2004 Best Poetry Book of the Year by ForeWord Magazine. He was also awarded Lannan Fellowship in 2008. He is also the translator of Polina Barskova’s Selected Poems (Tupelo 2010) and co-editor of Ecco Book of International Poetry (Ecco/Harper Collins, 2010). He teaches at San Diego State University.

Wed, Jan 26: The Kellogg-Hubbard Library, 135 Main Street, The Hayes Room, Montpelier, 6:00 p.m.. On Our Way: An Anthology of SafeArt Writing 2000-2010. Learn about Safe Art from Founding Director, Tracy Penfield followed by her performance of dance, song, and spoken word to begin the show. All poems are written by teens and adult survivors of domestic and sexual violence. Through this program the audience becomes aware of sensitive subjects that permeate teenage life and the lives of their families.

Wed, Mar 2: Kellogg-Hubbard Library, 135 Main Street, Montpelier, 7:00p.m.. The Soul Selects Her Own Society: The Life and Work of Emily Dickinson. Reclusive poet Emily Dickinson published only a fraction of her poetry during her lifetime. Dartmouth professor Colleen Boggs looks at Dickinson’s life and how we should consider her writings in our highly public modern age. A program of the Vermont Humanities Council. Info, vermonthumanities.org, 262-2626, or 223-3338 (library).

Thu, Mar 31: Vermont Studio Center, 80 Pearl Street, Johnson, 8:00 p.m.. Rosanna Warren. Rosanna Warren is the author of one chapbook of poems (Snow Day, Palaemon Press, 1981), and three collections of poems: Each Leaf Shines Separate (Norton, 1984), Stained Glass (Norton, 1993), and Departure (Norton, 2003). Her new book of poems, Ghost in a Red Hat, is due out from Norton in 2011. Fables of the Self: Studies in Lyric Poetry, a book of literary criticism, appeared from Norton in 2008. She edited and contributed to The Art of Translation: Voices From the Field (Northeastern, 1989), and has edited three chapbooks of poetry by prisoners.She has won fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, ACLS, The Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the Lila Wallace Readers’ Digest Fund, among others. Stained Glass won the Lamont Poetry Award from the Academy of American Poets. She has won the Witter Bynner Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Lavan Younger Poets’ Prize from the Academy of American Poets, and the Award of Merit in Poetry from The American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2004. She was a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1999 – 2005. You can view some of her published books on the Norton website.

Wed, Apr 6: Fletcher Free Library, 235 College Street, Burlington, 7:00p.m.. They Still Do Write Them The Way They Used To. Refuting the notion that modern poetry is formless and self-absorbed, poet Michael Palma considers contemporary poets who use rhyme, meter, and figurative language to explore timeless, universal themes. A program of the Vermont Humanities Council. Info, vermonthumanities.org, 262-2626, or 865-7211 (library).

Wed, Apr 6: Norwich Public Library, 368 Main Street, Norwich, 7:00p.m.. Poems of Faith and Doubt. Dartmouth professor Peter Saccio discusses belief and disbelief and issues of moral choice and divine grace as they appear in one poem each by Wallace Stevens, Philip Larkin, W.H. Auden, and George Herbert. A program of the Vermont Humanities Council. Info, vermonthumanities.org, 262-2626, or 388-4095 (library).

Wed, Apr 6: Ilsley Public Library, 75 Main Street, Middlebury, 7:00p.m.. An Evening of Latin American Poetry. Amherst College professor Ilan Stavans reads poems by Ruben Dario, Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriela Mistral, Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz, and others – parts of a tradition in which words are mechanisms of resistance against oppression. A program of the Vermont Humanities Council. Info, vermonthumanities.org, 262-2626, or 649-1184 (library).

Mon, Apr 18: Vermont Studio Center, 80 Pearl Street, Johnson, 8:00 p.m.. Stephen Dunn. Stephen Dunn is the author of sixteen collections of poetry, including Here and Now, which will be published by Norton in May, 2011. His Different Hours was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2001. Among his many other awards are The Paterson Prize for Sustained Literary Achievement, an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, but spends most of his time these days in Frostburg, Maryland, with his wife, the writer Barbara Hurd.

Wed, May 4: Fletcher Free Library, 235 College Street, Burlington, 7:00 p.m.. The Passages of Herman Melville. College professor Jay Parini reflects on Melville’s various voyages and how each led to a particular book or series of books.. A program of the Vermont Humanities Council. Info, vermonthumanities.org, 262-2626, or 865-7211 (library).

Thu, May 12: Vermont Studio Center, 80 Pearl Street, Johnson, 8:00 p.m.. David Ferry. David Ferry is Sophie Chantal Hart Professor of English, Emeritus, Wellesley College; Visiting Lecturer, Graduate Creative Writing Program, Boston University. His most recent book of poems is Of No Country I Know: New and Selected Poems (University of Chicago Press, 1999). His translations are (all of them published by Farrar Straus and Giroux): Gilgamesh: A New Rendering in English Verse (1992), The Odes of Horace (1997), The Eclogues of Virgil (1999), The Epistles of Horace (2001), The Georgics of Virgil (2005). Currently, he is completing a new set of collected poems and is translating The Aeneid of Virgil. Of No Country I Know received the Lenmore Marshall Prize, Academy of American Poets, and the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry, Library of Congress. For The Epistles of Horace, Ferry was awarded the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Honorary Fellow, Academy of American Poets, and has received an Academy Award for Literature, American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has received an honorary degree, D.Litt, from Amherst College.

Mon, May 30: Vermont Studio Center, 80 Pearl Street, Johnson, 8:00 p.m.. Jane Hirshfield. Jane Hirshfield is the author six poetry collections, most recently After (HarperCollins), named a best book of 2006 by The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, and England’s Financial Times. Other honors include major fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations. Her seventh poetry collection will be published by Knopf in August, 2011. Hirshfield is also the author of a now-classic collection of essays, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry and three equally classic books collecting the work of women poets of the past. Her work appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, the TLS, The New Republic, Poetry, and five editions of The Best American Poems. For more information on Jane Hirshfield, visit Barclay Agency’s website.

Thu, Jun 9: Vermont Studio Center, 80 Pearl Street, Johnson, 8:00 p.m.. Natasha Trethewey. Natasha Trethewey is author of Native Guard (Houghton Mifflin), for which she won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize; Bellocq’s Ophelia (Graywolf, 2002) which was named a Notable Book for 2003 by the American Library Association; and Domestic Work (Graywolf, 2000). She is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Study Center, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Bunting Fellowship Program of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. Her poems have appeared in such journals and anthologies as American Poetry Review, Callaloo, Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, New England Review, Gettysburg Review, and several volumes of Best American Poetry. At Emory University she is Professor of English and holds the Phillis Wheatley Distinguished Chair in Poetry.

Mon, Jun 27: Vermont Studio Center, 80 Pearl Street, Johnson, 8:00 p.m.. Ray Gonzalez. Ray Gonzalez is the author of twelve books of poetry including Faith Run (University of Arizona Press, 2009), Cool Auditor: Prose Poems (BOA Editions, 2009) The Hawk Temple at Tierra Grande (2003 Minnesota Book Award for Poetry), and Consideration of the Guitar: New and Selected Poems (2005). Turtle Pictures (Arizona, 2000) received the 2001 Minnesota Book Award for Poetry. His poetry has appeared in the 1999, 2000, and 2003 editions of The Best American Poetry. He is Director of the MFA Creative Writing Program at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

Mon, July 25: Vermont Studio Center, 80 Pearl Street, Johnson, 8:00 p.m.. Marie Howe. Marie Howe is the author of three volumes of poetry, The Kingdom of Ordinary Time (2008); The Good Thief (1998); and What the Living Do (1997), and is the co-editor of a book of essays, In the Company of My Solitude: American Writing from the AIDS Pandemic (1994). Stanley Kunitz selected Howe for a Lavan Younger Poets Prize from the American Academy of Poets. She has, in addition, been a fellow at the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College and a recipient of NEA and Guggenheim fellowships. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, Agni, Ploughsahres, Harvard Review, and The Partisan Review, among others. Currently, Howe teaches creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College, Columbia, and New York University.

Mon, Aug 22: Vermont Studio Center, 80 Pearl Street, Johnson, 8:00 p.m.. Tim Seibles. Tim Seibles is the author of several poetry collections including, Hurdy-Gurdy, Hammerlock, and Buffalo Head Solos. He was the poet-in-residence at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania for the spring semester of 2010. Most recently, his poems were featured in the Cortland Review and Ploughshares. His work was also published in the newly released anthologies, Black Nature and Seriously Funny. His next collection, Fast Animal, will be released from Cleveland State University Press in spring 2011. He lives in Virginia where he teaches writing at Old Dominion University. He is also visiting faculty for the Stonecoast MFA program in Maine.

Thu, Sep 29: Vermont Studio Center, 80 Pearl Street, Johnson, 8:00 p.m.. Patrizia Cavalli. Patrizia Cavalli was born in Todi, Umbria, and lives in Rome. Since 1974, she has published five volumes of poetry with Einaudi, including Sempre aperto teatro, 1999 (Theatre Always Open) which won the prestigious Premio Viareggio Repaci and Pigre divinità e pigra sorte, 2006 (Lazy Gods and Lazy Fate) for which she received the Premio Internazionale Pasolini. Bilingual editions of her poems have been published in France, Canada, Mexico, and Germany. She has contributed to numerous magazines and reviews, including Poetry and The New Yorker. Describing her work in The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Verse (1996), J.D. McClatchy observed “her style is hard-bitten, on the edge. The circumstances of a poem, although private, are never merely personal, they reach out to larger, more abiding and vulnerable realities.” Giorgio Agamben has characterized her verses as “a prosody…expressed in the most fluent, seamless, and colloquial language of 20th century Italian poetry.” Cavalli also has translated Moliere’s Amphytrion, Wilde’s Salome, Shakespeare’s The Tempest, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Othello.

Mon, Oct 17: Vermont Studio Center, 80 Pearl Street, Johnson, 8:00 p.m.. D. A. Powell. D. A. Powell is the author of Tea, Lunch and Cocktails. His most recent collection, Chronic, was a finalist for the Publishing Triangle and the National Book Critics Circle Awards. Along with David Trinidad and a cast of hundreds, he is the co-author of By Myself: An Autobiography (Turtle Point, 2009). Powell’s honors have included fellowships from the Millay Colony, the National Endowment for the Arts and the James Michener Foundation, as well as a Pushcart Prize, the Lyric Poetry Award from the Poetry Society of America and an Academy of American Poets Prize. In 2010, he received the Kingsley Tufts Prize from Claremont University. D. A. Powell’s work appears in numerous anthologies, including Norton’s American Hybrids, Legitimate Dangers: Poets of the New Century and Best American Poetry 1998. His recent poems appear in Kenyon Review, Quarterly West, American Poetry Review, New England Review and Virginia Quarterly Review. Powell has taught at Columbia University, the University of Iowa’s Iowa Writers’ Workshop and New England College. A former Briggs-Copeland Lecturer in Poetry at Harvard University, he now teaches full-time in the English Department at University of San Francisco.

Mon, Dec 12: Vermont Studio Center, 80 Pearl Street, Johnson, 8:00 p.m.. Cyrus Cassells. Cyrus Cassells is the author of four acclaimed books of poetry: The Mud Actor, Soul Make a Path through Shouting, Beautiful Signor, and More Than Peace and Cypresses. His fifth book, The Crossed-Out Swastika, and a translation manuscript, Still Life with Children: Selected Poems of Francesc Parcerisas, are forthcoming. Among his honors are a Lannan Literary Award, a William Carlos Williams Award, a Pushcart Prize, two NEA grants, and a Lambda Literary Award. He is a tenured Professor of English at Texas State University-San Marcos and has served on the faculty of Cave Canem, the African American Poets Workshop. He divides his time between Austin, New York City, and Paris, and works on occasion in Barcelona as a translator of Catalan poetry.

Again, if you become aware of an event that isn’t posted above, please let me know. My apologies if I have left off anything of importance to any of you, but it can always be corrected in the next Vermont Poetry Newsletter.

I want the many readers who visit from other parts of the world to know that you're welcome in my home. We in the United States, as in any other country, aren't always represented by who governs us. It doesn't matter to me where you're from, what language you speak or what truth you believe in. What matters to me is what's in your heart—and my own heart is what I offer you.

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Patrick Gillespie has self-published one book of Poetry and edited nothing besides. His poetry and criticism has been firmly ignored and hasn't been translated into a single language. Gillespie has never been a Poet Laureate (let alone a Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere), a Literary Fellow of the National Endowment of the Arts, or a Fellow of the Vermont Arts Council. He has received no prizes from the Poetry Foundation (or any other poetry related organizations) and the devil reportedly worries that Hell will freeze over if he ever receives anything like a Genius Grant from the MacArthur Fellows Program. He has been firmly rejected by any and all publishers. No plaques have been or will be dedicated to him or his poetry. Gillespie has received no recognition or prizes of any kind. He holds zero academic credentials or titles. In short, Gillespie is just like you -- of little to no importance to all but a few. You have no reason whatsoever to read him. He wears bottle-cap glasses, works as a Carpenter, has three daughters and a good sense of humor. He is currently replacing all the bad windows in his Vermont home.